Let’s take this nice and slow. Say we’re both in charge of something, like a nation. We hold co-equal status according to our Constitution. I’m the President and you’re the Congress. Now, say I want to do something that you don’t want me to do. For argument’s sake, let’s say I want to continue a war that you don’t want me to continue.

It might seem easy, if I also hold the title ‘Commander-in-Chief.’ Aha! Well, when it comes to war, I would seem to have the trump card. But, also for the sake of argument, let’s say that I am just about the only person who wants to continue this war. Even my supporters aren’t all that thrilled about my war these days. Counter-balancing my power, you have control of the public purse. hmmmm . . . This is starting to get interesting.

Let’s go even farther: let’s say that all the reasons I gave you for going to war in the first place were wrong. We’re not going to get into whether I lied to you or was given bad intelligence. We’ll just leave it at all the reasons I gave have evaporated into the fog of war. There supposed to be weapons of mass destruction (read: atomic). There were none. There were supposed to be biological weapons. There were none. There supposed to be Al Qaeda training camps run by Saddam Hussein. There were none. There was supposed to be contact between the Iraqis and Mohammed Atta. There was none. There was supposed to be an Al Qaeda presence in Saddam’s Iraq. There was none then, there is one now. The only place where foreign insurgents were known to be before the war was in the north of Iraq, an area controlled by our good friends, the Kurds. (more…)

Mr. Bush gave his State of the Union (SOTU) speech on Tuesday night. He got very high ratings. Some 45 million people were watching to see what he was going to say and propose for our republic. I don’t know what they were expecting or hoping for; but I do know what they got.

It was one of his shorter speeches, lasting only 49 minutes: It just seemed longer. Unlike his last speech to the nation, he didn’t admit that any mistakes had been made in Iraq. Of course when he did say the “mistakes had been made,” in his previous speech; he said it in the passive voice so that the blame couldn’t be placed at the clay feet of this administration.

He couldn’t avoid the subject of Iraq: it took up half of his 49 minutes. But, this time he was asking the newly-emboldened Democratic Congress to give war a chance (An aside here: he referred to Congress as Democrat, leaving off the “ic.” This is Republican tactic designed to annoy Democrats. Somehow it’s supposed to deny Democrats the ability to be democratic. What it is, in reality, is petty. It shows Republicans for what they are. Shall we now call Republicans, “Republics”?).

Returning to the SOTU: there were some subjects that came up more than in the past. These subjects were health insurance, oil, Iraq, Al Qaeda, terrorism, and deficits. What was even more interesting were those things that came up less or not at all in Tuesday night’s speech: surpluses, Social Security, taxes, and the economy. Finally, Osama bin Laden was mentioned just once. Yes, he is Osama bin Forgotten as far as George W. Bush is concerned. (more…)

Have you ever written a paper in a word processing program and had the damn thing tell you that you were writing in the passive voice? Well, Mr. Bush’s speech the other night would have brought the ‘passive voice’ flag up often. “Where mistakes have been made the responsibility rests with me.” That is the cleverest use of the passive voice that I may have ever heard. He appears to take responsibility; while, in fact, pointing the finger at unknown others. What is he saying? That others have made mistakes; and he is magnanimously stepping up and accepting responsibility even though, mind you, he didn’t make the mistakes. Of course, if he had said, “I have made mistakes,” he would have been taking the blame, but only grown ups do that.

In this administration, no one takes responsibility. Advancement is based on who one knows, not what one knows. Diligence is punished, and incompetence is rewarded. Americans going to Iraq to work in the interim government were vetted by their allegiance to the Republican Party and the agenda of the religious right. People were questioned on who they voted for and whether or not they supported Roe V. Wade. This is the same administration, remember, that has been trying to disembowel the civil service in the U.S. in order to return to a spoils system in bureaucratic appointments. But, I stray from the point of Mr. Bush’s speech.

In his speech Mr. Bush made many claims. Let’s look at just a couple: (more…)

Just a few thoughts now that that our long national funeral has ended. There’s a lot to be said for loyalty. However, one must always question what they’re loyal to: is it to their ‘school,’ or to their ‘tribe,’ or to their nation? It might seem an odd question, but bear with me.

After Gerald Ford died, we found out that he had not supported the war in Iraq. He told this to Bob Woodward in an interview 2 years ago with the caveat that it not be revealed until after Ford’s death. So, where was his loyalty, in the end? Was it to the country? Or was it to his school, his tribe?

Do you find it odd that I call the Republican Party a tribe? Well, what do you call it when someone puts his loyalty to his party above his loyalty to his country? When his voice was needed in the national debate, he chose to remain silent. He didn’t support the war, he thought that it was wrong from its premise to its execution; but he said nothing. Now, we have his hollow ghostly voice speaking up too softly, and too late. When he could have made a difference, he chose silence. (more…)

Well, I did call it, didn’t I? Just to refresh your memories here were my predictions for 7 November:

Senate 5-8 seat pick up for Democrats
House 27-34 seat pick up for Democrats
Governors 4-6 pick up for Democrats

The Senate is on the low end of my estimate (5-6), but still there. The House is right on (33) and the governors are at the high end of my margin of error (6). This is what happens when you strip the rhetoric, the partisan passions and negative ads from your analysis. I’m not saying that those aren’t factors in how elections are decided. What I am saying is that if you want an honest analysis, you must strip all the noise from what you’re looking at. (more…)

Here you see the DOD’s Central Command’s take on the civil conflict in Iraq as of 18 Oct 06. The HB looked at this chart and said, “Bloody, hell! What does it mean?” Well, any chart coming out of the bureaucratic quagmire that is the Department of Defence, will necessarily be obtuse. So, Anon will ‘splain it all.

The symbols on the left are defined near the bottom of the chart. So, we can see first that the political/religious leaders are increase(ing) their publicly hostile rhetoric (toward other groups, toward the U.S.? They don’t say) has been “routine.” Okay, now that you’ve got that; let’s see if we can put this in plain English. (more…)

You’ll remember that sometime back we had a lesson in polling and statistics. At that time I said,

What can you say when people, who are obviously intelligent, do truly stupid things? The easy thing to say is that they’re mad, insane; but that isn’t the answer. Life is far more complicated than that.

Let’s go back in time, over 30 years ago. No one ever accused Richard Nixon of being stupid; yet he did what seemed to be an incredibly stupid thing: he did not destroy the secret audio tapes he had made of his conversations in the White House. At the time amateur psychologists of every stripe tried to understand this truly bizarre behaviour. Why would you hold on to the “bloody knife”? Without the tapes it would have been John Dean’s word against Nixon, H.R. (Bob) Haldemann and John Ehrlichman. Most people did not believe that Dean had a photographic memory. Then a Mr. Butterfield came before the committee and admitted a system of taping had been put in place and used by Nixon. Much sturm und drang followed with the Supreme Court finally ordering that the tapes be turned over. (more…)

I’ve been away for a few weeks. I was in Vienna (Wien) and then Florence (Firenze). I had always said that I wouldn’t go to Austria as long as Jörge Haider was still drawing a breath, but I had a need to see Klimt and Schiele. So, off I went to Wien.

Wien was decimated during the Second World War (see: The Third Man) and it didn’t profit by its reconstruction. There are rows upon rows of ugly concrete apartment blocks. As I looked out of my hotel window, I realized once again that many people don’t care where they live. Or perhaps it’s that they can’t afford to care. We don’t all have a real choice as to our living arrangements.

Wien has its charms. Stadt Park and the Hofburg Quarter are two. It certainly has good food and lots of it. It has some of the most dramatic skies in the world. It’s exciting to watch the weather move through. Yet, somehow I kept thinking of that saying, “How clever those Austrians, they’ve made the world think that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was German.”

There is a lively art scene in Wien, and the museums are top notch; but I kept wanting to stop old men and ask them what they did in the war. I had this same desire in Spain every time I saw an old man wearing a beret. “Whose side were you on?” In Spain no one would ever own up to having heard of Franco, so I couldn’t engage anyone in a discussion about him. This is why I should never go to places like Austria, Germany, Poland, or anyplace that capitulated or conspired with the Nazis. Of course, that would put most of Europe off limits for me. So, it’s best I don’t think about it. (more…)

The existential administration continues on its merry way. Despite the fact that approximately 2/3 of Americans have lost faith in their cause and their abilities, Mr. Bush, et al insist that good days are right around the corner. Unfortunately, that corner is at the end of the longest block in the universe.

So, when Reuters published this photo of Mr. Cheney last week; it was as if someone were sending him a message. Of course it’s not just Dick Cheney who needs this message. Now that the book Cobra II has been published, we can see that there were Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Franks and Bush. And they all need to retire

When so much blood and treasure has been spent, why is it so hard to pull back from the brink? (more…)